


Bella Figura

by basset_voyager



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angie-centric, F/F, Family, Gen, History, Italian-American Character, New York City, One Shot, Pre-Relationship, who's hungry for pizzelles after this i know i am
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:04:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3183116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basset_voyager/pseuds/basset_voyager
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Bella figura</em>: an Italian phrase meaning a good impression, something or someone to be proud of. </p><p>or, Angie spends some time with her family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bella Figura

Nobody knows midtown like Angie Martinelli does. Every weekday morning, she navigates the subway from the Griffith Hotel to the automat, nodding at every newspaper boy and dodging every pothole with practiced ease. At any given moment, she could tell you exactly how many blocks you are from Macy’s or the Flatiron Building, and she’s been in every theatre and casting room from 15th to 58th street. The fact that she may or may not have snuck into half of those places is nobody’s business but her own. It’s her city, and she can go where she likes in it, asshole customers and snooty producers be damned. From Monday to Saturday, Angie belongs to midtown.

But her Sundays? Angie’s Sundays are for East Harlem.

Every Sunday morning, Angie all but breaks her alarm clock in half at 6:00am and puts on her best dress before riding the train uptown to her parents’ cramped apartment. It sits tucked over her father’s shop, the kitchen window directly above the sign that declares in faded paint: MARTINELLI’S SHOE REPAIR. In good weather, men sit out on the sidewalks smoking cigarettes and gossipping loudly in Italian as they try to get in one good card game before their wives drag them to Mass. Sometimes, they know her, _la piccola ragazza Martinelli_ , and she gets dragged into settling a debate about who’s cheating who and, had that been her on the radio yesterday? She always drags herself away from the conversation as quickly as she can, shaking her head and smiling as they yell after her to tell her father this or that.

Once she’s slipped up the narrow side staircase next to the shop and put her key in the door, two things hit her all at once. The first is the smell of the lunch her mother has already started on, the scent of red pepper and olive oil and garlic so different from the powdered eggs and crumb cakes at the automat. The second is three small people who tackle her the moment they see her, hanging from her skirts and her arms until they manage to pull her down to the floor.

“Angie!” squeaks her little brother Nico, who she swears is a half an inch taller every time she sees him. “Ma, Angela’s here!”

Angie tousles Nico’s hair and picks up her sister Maria, getting heavy now that she’s turned seven. The smallest of her attackers, her cousin Ines, holds on to her leg.

“ _Sei in ritardo_ , Angie,” her mother says, like she always does, “I bet you go out dancing last night.”

“I’m right on time, Ma,” Angie argues, kissing her mother on the cheek, “and it’s ‘went.’”

“You don’t like my English?” her mother scoffs. “What a _brutta figura_ if we are late to Mass.”

“Ma, you do know they do it again an hour after, right?” Angie laughs as she hugs her mother tightly, making Maria complain when she gets slightly squished between them.

“And the hour after that,” offers her aunt, who stands at the counter chopping eggplant.

“See? Aunt Amelia has some sense,” Angie says, and her mother responds by making a dismissive gesture with her arm. Angie makes a face at Amelia, who stifles a laugh.

“Where’s Nora?” Angie asks. At seventeen, Nora is the oldest of the siblings after Angie, but they don’t have much in common after that. Where Angie is as loud and boisterous as their mother, Nora is shy, with a still and observant sort of manner that makes most people pass over her without a second look. She’s Angie’s favorite.

“Down in the shop with your father,” Angie’s mother answers. “Always working, those two.”

“I’ll go get them,” Angie offers.

She sets Maria down and hurries down the staircase that leads into the back of the shop, darkened today except for a single lamp by which Angie can see her father and Nora arguing animatedly, leather and tools abandoned between them.

“All I’m saying is that _Italiano_ commitment to the left should not die, nor should it be marred by hypocrisy,” Nora is saying, her hands sawing the air in the way they only do when she knows there aren’t any strangers to see her. “Sure, we’ve kept Marcantonio in Congress, but it’s not enough. We should be actively supporting and coordinating with Negro Harlem and their political efforts there.”

“Ah, Nor, I thought we agreed no politics on Sundays,” Angie interrupts from the doorway.

Nora stops talking long enough to run over and throw her arms around Angie’s neck in a tight hug.

“Angie, explain to her that they only begin to think we are not criminals,” her father says, walking over to kiss her hello.

“I’m just saying that if you only fight to raise yourself up, it isn’t justice,” Nora concludes. 

“That is good. Who said that?” Angie’s father asks. Nora thinks for a moment. 

“I think I did,” she says. Angie laughs and puts her arm around Nora’s shoulders.

“Look, you can save the world after Mass,” Angie tells her. “Because I think if everyone’s not ready to go in ten minutes Ma’ll have a heart attack.”

They make their way back up to the tiny kitchen, where Aunt Amelia is chasing Ines around the table in a vain attempt to get her to wash her face. The only adult who could ever get Ines to behave was Uncle Alfie, Angie’s father’s brother, but he didn't come home from Normandy. It’s strange, still, that empty place at the table, as if he’ll come bounding in at any moment to announce that it was all a big _scherzo_ , a joke.

Angie’s mother is sticking pins in her hair in front of the mirror in the bedroom while Nico pulls petulantly at his tie on the floor behind her.

“Hey, Dom!” somebody calls from the street, and Angie’s father pushes open the kitchen window. Some of her father’s friends that she recognizes stand on the sidewalk waving.

“Do you have time for a game of scopa?” one asks, holding up a pack of playing cards and grinning.

“Ah, no, we go to eight o’clock Mass,” Angie’s father calls back. “Besides, last time I think you nearly kill me over that hand.” He looks at Angie. “Killed. I mean killed.”

“Well, maybe later, huh?”

Angie’s father nods and waves his hat.

“Hey, Angela! _Come stai_?” another one of the men calls. Angie squeezes herself into the window next to her father and smiles. 

“Very well, thank you, Mr. Toscano.”

“When will you have a nice man to bring home, Angie?” Mr. Toscano asks. Angie makes a show of miming locking her lips closed and tossing the key out the window, which makes everyone laugh. Still, her stomach twists uncomfortably in a way that has nothing to do with hunger for the meal they’ll be eating after church.

“He makes a point,” Angie’s father murmurs to her, his hand on her shoulder.

Angie goes through the motions at Mass, kneeling and standing when she’s supposed to and letting the sound of the Latin wash numbly over her. She thinks about the men who come in and out of the automat, starch and red-faced, and the boys her parents sometimes drag over to her side on special occasions, the sons of friends of friends. Some of them are alright, she thinks, but they’re not - her mind drifts to another automat customer: posture like a soldier, soft smile accentuated by lipstick the color of sin, and that accent, God, Angie could listen to that accent for hours. Maybe - 

No.

Sometimes, she thinks she catches Peggy looking at her the way she hopes, the way she’d like to be looked at by someone special, but then a second later it’s gone and Peggy is rushing her out of the room on account of one flimsy excuse or another. Besides, Peggy is a nice woman, proper even, and she has that fella who comes into the automat sometimes. Be realistic, Angie tells herself. There’s no maybe here. Plus, thinking about kissing girls in church? That must be a double sin. Talk about being the family embarrassment. 

After Mass, it’s impossible to stay wrapped up inside her own head when there’s so much food and talking and laughter. She lets Ines sit on her lap and eat half of her pasta while she tells everyone all her stories about the automat and her glamorous life as a New York actress, only embellishing half as much as she usually does. 

By the time Angie kisses everyone goodbye, she’s feeling full and content. Her mother presses a package of pizzelles into one of her hands while Nico holds onto the other.

“Stay, Angie,” Nico whines, but Angie shakes her head at him.

“I have an audition at five o’clock, kid,” she explains. 

“On a Sunday?”

“That’s the city that never sleeps for ya.”

Nico bites his lip and rummages around in his pocket for something.

“Here,” he says, “take this with you. It’s my good luck charm.” 

Angie looks down and sees a Captain America trading card, worn from being folded and carried around in Nico’s pocket so much. 

“Oh, I can’t take that, Nico, it’s yours,” she argues, but he shakes his head. 

“You can give it back to me later,” he says.

“Well, alright,” she tells him. “I guess it can’t hurt to have the big guy in blue watching over me, right?” She tousles Nico’s hair and he smiles. 

At the audition, they stop her halfway through her song and tell her they’ll call her, though she knows they probably won’t. After, she climbs the stairs to her room at the Griffith, but when she’s almost at her door, she changes her mind and backtracks to Peggy’s room. She knocks, and a moment later Peggy appears in a robe, makeup off for once, which reveals tired circles under her sharp eyes.

“Hey,” Angie says. “My mother gave me all these pizzelles - they’re cookies, they’re really good, I promise. I just thought you might want some. I mean, no offense, but I’ve seen your kitchen, and it’s a complete bust.”

Peggy smiles, and there’s that hint of softness in it, a vulnerability that she doesn’t seem to show to many people. Angie’s never liked that in people - guardedness. She doesn’t understand it. It’s okay in Nora because she only says what's important, and, Angie realizes now, it’s okay in Peggy, too, though it’s not as clear why. 

“I go to church with my parents every Sunday and I always end up coming home with something,” Angie explains. “Ma is constantly worrying that I’m starving down here all by myself.”

“It sounds like you have a lovely family,” Peggy says.

“Well, they’re a little annoying sometimes,” Angie laughs, “but I guess that’s what makes them family, right?”

She hands Peggy a pizzelle. 

“It looks like a flower,” Peggy says. “Honestly, it’s so pretty I almost feel bad eating it.” Angie giggles. 

“Eat it, it’s good. They come from a bakery in Harlem.”

Peggy does, and Angie wishes she could freeze time and just stare at the way she closes her eyes when she bites off a piece of the cookie. 

“My family’s all back in England,” Peggy tells her. “It’s very rare I get to see them.”

“Well,” Angie finds herself saying before she can think about it, “if you wanna borrow mine, we’ve always got room for one more at lunch after Mass, or at dinner any other day.”

Peggy looks down at her hands, and at first Angie thinks she’s said something wrong. But she sees after a moment that Peggy is blushing. 

“You’d do that?” Peggy asks.

“Yeah, of course, English,” Angie says, hitting her lightly on the shoulder. “I’d be proud to bring you home.” 

Peggy beams at her, and Angie thinks that maybe Captain America is her good luck charm too after all.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Bella figura_ / _brutta figura_ is a concept that can mean literally beautiful, but also has to do with presenting yourself properly to others, both in appearance and behavior. In my personal experience, it's used to express whether or not the way you're acting is reflecting well on you and your family. 
> 
> Vito Marcantonio was a member of the American Labor Party and a House rep for New York from 1938 - 1951. His district centered in East Harlem.
> 
> [Scopa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopa) is an Italian card game.
> 
> I'm at [mutantwanda](http://mutantwanda.tumblr.com) on Tumblr.
> 
> EDIT: RomanImp created [a wonderful comic](http://romans-art.tumblr.com/post/109417683049/short-cartinelli-comic-loosely-based-on-bella) inspired by this fic!
> 
> Thank you to everyone for your kind comments（˶′◡‵˶）


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